


i'll make it up to you when you get home

by theamazingpeterparker



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Childhood Friends, Gen, M/M, Musician Niall, Philadelphia, Sexuality Crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-06 20:13:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8767555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theamazingpeterparker/pseuds/theamazingpeterparker
Summary: He doesn’t know how he’d even bring this up. Certainly not now in the middle of a record shop while drunk, Hey, Niall, did you ever want to kiss me? I never thought about kissing you until an hour ago. It’s been eight years since I’ve seen you and I never imagined it’d be like this. Hey, Niall, do you think you can fall in love in one night.





	

**Author's Note:**

> do u ever just feel a little existential / title and musical inspo is by into it. over it.

##

“They’re not bad,” Liam says around the neck of his bottle, turning to look across the bar at the stage. Usually it’s shitty metal bands or teenagers with some banjos but tonight’s band has chops, one guy at a piano and the other with a guitar. Louis hasn’t been paying much attention since their set started, but Liam’s not wrong. He’s at least been able to hear himself think tonight, and he and Liam’s conversation hasn’t been drowned out by emo, gutteral growling about the fate of humanity, or whatever.

They listen for a bit, Liam facing the stage while Louis stays crouched over the bar, cracking peanut shells under the heel of his palm. The bar fills with the din of applause at the end of the song, Liam turning back to the bar and Louis sliding him a second beer.

The pianist plays a few chords and then Louis hears it, the lead singer’s laugh, reverberating through the microphone around the room. He’d know that laugh anywhere. His heart is in this throat when he turns to look back at the stage and recognizes him immediately, like an old song he hasn’t heard in years. Niall’s already bobbing around up on stage, his face turning away from the audience to look back at his friend at the piano before his fingers curl around the neck of his guitar, strumming gently into the next song of the set. Louis can’t breathe.

It’s only when Niall leans into the mic that Liam grabs Louis’s shoulder. His grip is gentle but it’s something about that Louis jolts out of his trance as if he’d been smacked. “You okay?”

Louis gives him a stuttered nod, “I just. I know the singer.”

Liam hums around the neck of his beer bottle, turning back to the bar. He’s a good friend for not pushing it.

“I have to at least say hey,” Louis says at the end of Niall and Friend’s set, more to himself than Liam. Liam sticks close as Louis starts making his way forwards to the stage, pushing against the crowd that’s moving back towards the bar. Louis lingers behind the last row on people against the stage for a moment, doesn’t know why the fuck he’s hesitating, and then the last row of people breaks and Niall is kneeling right in front of him, untangling the microphone and guitar and amp cords.

Louis doesn’t have anything to say, no witty hello or old joke but it’s okay because Niall looks up, finds Louis’s face and immediately smiles. It feels like a homecoming.

They end up lingering at the bar until closing. Niall’s pianist is Harry, charming and quiet and the type that Niall and Louis probably would have made fun of in high school. Niall asks around his beer what Louis has been up to, all bright-eyed and sincere, “imagine you would’ve taken over the world by now,” and Louis feels a blush creep up his neck, why is this so easy.

“Uhh, nothing, really. Moved to Seattle for a while, came back east for UPenn’s law school.”

“And me,” Niall pipes up with a playful smile and Louis feels himself immediately mirroring his expression and nodding. “And you.”

Louis asks Niall the same question, what has he been up to, and Niall scruffs a fist through his hair, exchanging grins with Harry. “I mean, we’re not in U-fucking-Penn’s law program, so. Can’t be that impressive, can it?”

And yeah, it can. Louis clicks his teeth on his beer bottle as Niall proceeds to relive the eight years it’s been since they’ve seen each other, humble shrugs and “yeah, I don’t know”s thrown in but Louis listens with rapt attention, feels like a degree from UPenn could never stack up to the things Niall’s been up to.

“Tried college for a bit, yeah? Uh, took three semesters at Temple before I decided it wasn’t really my thing, Harry and I met there and freshman year ended up skipping classes to go do battle of the bands, play stupid gigs around the city, you know.” Niall starts picking at the label of his bottle as he continues, “So we got picked up by like, a local label, Punk Rock Payroll, and they got us like, bigger gigs, openers at the Factory and whatever. We went on tour two years ago opening for some bands from New York, and then last year we headlined. Played the Barbary here, mostly small shit like that, but we hit twenty three states.”

Louis can’t stop himself from smiling. “You remember eighth grade Niall worried that he’d never get out of Pennsylvania?” he knocks a fist against the bar counter. “Bartender, celebration shots.”

##

They exchange numbers and promise to catch up and Niall’s final laugh and hug sticks to Louis’s ribcage, feels like a real promise, not one of those _we’ll hang out_ but never do people. He explains it to Liam on the train home, _we were attached at the hip until I moved to Pittsburgh sophomore year of high school. We just kind of fell out, you know how that happens? And it sucks because college happened and adulthood happened and it was hard to keep in touch._

_Is that all?_

_What?_

_You falling out because of you moving. It’s kind of hard to totally lose touch with your best friend just because you moved, right?_

Louis doesn’t tell him what else. Feels like he’d be jumping a gun that hasn’t been cocked yet.

##

They go to see Niall and Harry play a small set at a dive in Northern Liberties, a crammed room of thirty locals and a few of Niall and Harry’s friends from the band scene all at the warm edge of drunk, teasing Louis for his UPenn lanyard and heckling Niall and Harry to the point where he laughs through half of his last song and ends it with flipping the room off. He and Harry are a little drunk throughout their set, anyway, helping each other off the stage and Niall trips right over to Louis. “Can we get food? Real food. Not bar food.”

Louis slings an arm around his shoulders. “Gather your bandmate.”

They end up at Silk City smushed into a booth devouring plates of fries and burgers, their drunk high coming down to mellow exhaustion.

Niall slumps into Louis' side when the door of the diner chimes, the three of them going quiet for a few seconds as a group of people shuffle down the narrow aisle to the corner booth. Louis frowns, shrugging Niall off and Harry's looking between them, chewing on his straw.

"Who's that?" Louis finally asks, once it's apparent that neither Niall or Harry is going to voluntarily tell him.

"Niall’s ex," Harry pipes up after another few moments of Niall’s head still tucked into Louis’s shoulder.

Louis twists in his seat to peer down the aisle. "Which one?"

"The one who's looking at us, dick," Niall grumbles, glancing over his shoulder at the end booth and sighing. "Bressie, the one in the Phillies shirt."

"He doesn't seem very..." Louis hesitates at what to say, but Bressie is currently holding two straws under his lips like a walrus, so Louis lets the action speak for itself. Louis and Harry’s expressions are both that of disappointment, but Niall watches the corner group and looks completely endeared. Harry shakes his head gently at Louis.

“Hey,” Louis flicks a finger against the little dent in Niall’s chin and he looks over at him, eyes skipping up and down his face like he’s coming out of a trace.

“Sorry. I....” Niall throws a hurt look at Harry and rubs his eyes. “I didn’t know he was with someone new.”

Louis casts a glance over his shoulder; Bressie’s got an arm around some frat boy type, leaning close and speaking into his neck. Louis snorts. “I wouldn’t feel threatened,” he says, leaning equally close to Niall. Harry snorts into his drink. Niall pulls away kind of suddenly, brow creased in that still-drunk-I-think-I’m-going-to-tell-you-a-secret expression that Louis hasn’t seen in years. He loops an arm around the back of their booth. “You were the one who made me realize I was into guys, you know that?” he asks and Louis feels himself blush without meaning to. Niall continues without missing a beat. “But Bressie was the one who taught me that that wasn’t a bad thing.” He trails off after that, like he didn’t have a follow-up. “It’s just hard. To feel like you still don’t know where you’re supposed to be.”

They sit in silence for a while, listening to Bressie’s rowdy group sing and talk loudly until Harry’s able to flag their waitress down for the check.

##

“Do you remember dissecting a frog together in eighth grade?” Louis asks. Niall turns to look at him and knees him in the hip.

“You mean, do you remember when you walked up to me halfway through the school year and said ‘Hi I’m Louis’ and asked if I wanted to cut open a frog with you?”

“So you remember,” Louis grins. Niall throws a peanut at him. They’re sharing a hammock at Spruce Street Harbor Park and there’s a teenage couple who are vying for the hammock and have been giving them the evil eye for half an hour. Niall plucks aimlessly at the guitar laid across his chest.  “Did you think we’d be best friends then?” Louis asks.

“Oh, I knew the moment you cut out the poor thing’s heart and handed it to me,” Niall replies, fluttering a hand at his chest. “You’d be the love of my life.”

“You’ve always been blunt like that, you know?” Louis blurts. Chalks it up to their being day-drunk from pregaming too hard at Morgan’s while waiting for Harry to get here so they can walk over to South Street. Niall looks at him, gentle and patient, tapping a knuckle against the wooden body of the guitar. Louis takes a deep breath and turns to look over at the angry teenage couple. “Like when you told me you knew you were bi. Like when I freaked out about my own sexuality and you were so…” he doesn’t have the word for it but he remembers it exactly. Louis flushed and pacing in Niall’s basement after he had gotten turned on by a teammate sitting on his lap after baseball practice, Niall sitting cross-legged on his ratty basement couch, hair white-blonde because he tried to bleach his own hair and left it in too long. His face blotchy red with a mouth full of metal. The way he grabbed Louis by the wrist and said quietly, “you can try stuff with me, if you want.” The way Louis had stopped dead in his tracks and Niall pulled his hand away like he had been burned. That Niall never got mad at Louis for his shitty reaction even though he had every right to be.

“I know, Lou,” Niall replies, pulling him back to the present. He almost looks the same in the moment, vulnerable and soft. Except there’s something different, now. That vulnerability looking like the strongest fucking thing on earth when he gets on stage and sings about _how he left me hollow_. He nudges Louis again. “I’ve missed you, Tommo.”

It sounds like something bigger, feels like the _I love you_ that Louis never felt sure enough to say as a teenager. He opens his mouth just as Harry comes bounding across the courtyard and Niall falls out of the hammock to greet him. Louis rolls out and they start towards the South Street bridge. The teenagers take the hammock immediately.

##  
  
Liam meets them at the South Street Diner and he’s already drunk, hanging off of Louis like a giant drunk lump of affection who’s apparently bent on getting his ears, nose, eyebrow, _something_ pierced tonight, _“_ Well okay, Payno, let’s walk a few blocks and think that over first. I’m not quite drunk enough to let you go through with it.”

They get dinner at the diner and after two hours the phones start going off, Niall’s band friends down at Dobb’s watching some new group play but Louis’s school friends are at Tattooed Mom and Liam’s girlfriend and her friends are getting Cheesesteaks down at Jim’s so they get shots and swap numbers and Uber coupon codes and agree to at least stick together until Dobb’s. The plan lasts about two blocks before they lose Liam to a tattoo shop and some work friend and Niall gets caught in the crowd waiting outside the TLA for a Lumineers show. Harry and Louis find refuge in Dobb’s and Louis clings to the bar counter like a lifeline while Harry floats off into the crowds towards the little stage in the back. He’s nursing a gin and tonic when Niall claps him on the back and Louis drops his head back onto Niall’s shoulder in relief. “Thank god, I’m out of my element here.”

Niall’s laugh rings in his ear over the din of the bar and he orders two more gin and tonics. “You lose Harry?”

“He’s here somewhere.” Louis grabs Niall by the back of the neck, pulls him close. “How is it that we’ve both lived in Philly for the last four years and never run into each other?”

Niall’s shoulder shiver with laughter that Louis doesn’t hear over the loud, tuning strum of the next band setting up. And then Niall’s mouth is at his ear, “It’s because I’m at dive bars every weekend and you’re in law libraries.”

Louis punches him gently but it’s worth the smile he gets in return. Niall slaps him on the back and says/gestures something about _stage...band...Harry_ before he disappears into the crowd.

It’s not a big place, though, and he circles back to the bar ten minutes later looking confused and concerned. “No Harry?” Louis asks. Niall shakes his head. He looks really worried. “He’s a grown man, Niall, I’m sure he can hold his own.”

“No,” Niall half-laughs, grabs Louis by the collar of his shirt, “Harry drunk and alone at punk shows usually ends with. Bodily injury.”

“Your moody pianist gets into mosh pits or something?” Louis asks but Niall’s ears perk up and he starts towing Louis towards the bar’s exit, where there’s some commotion happening outside on the sidewalk.

It’s Harry, being held back by some guy but he’s spitting furious at some punk douchebag with a vomit-green mohawk. Harry’s shouting at the kid when Niall and Louis get outside, “I used to be a baker, you pretentious fuckhead, and I am _telling_ you that buttercream frosting and royal frosting are _not the same thing_ , you fucking dickbag--”

Niall joins in grabbing Harry’s forearms and steering him away from the sneering kid, who turns to his group of friends saying “I don’t know, I’ve never been able to tell the difference.”

Louis is caught half-laughing while also trying to turn Harry away from the looming bar bouncer who looks like he’s considering breaking it up himself and Niall’s doing his best to console Harry, “Harry, you have to stop getting in bar fights over pastries. Repo is half a block,” Niall says firmly and Harry all but melts into Niall’s side and huffs his defeat. “We’ll find you Avett Brothers vinyl, okay?”

“They’re not the _same_.”

“I know, love.” Niall ruffles his hair and tugs Harry by the hand down the sidewalk.

Louis has browsed through Repo Records before but never at the same pace and concentration that drunk Harry and Niall do, combing meticulously through every single stack and comparing multiple copies of the same album. Louis is bored after five minutes so he shadows Niall. The younger man is so different but he’s still so solidly _Niall_ , the Niall that he was always going to grow into, the type of person that Louis might never have been friends with if they didn’t have such a history. They don’t listen to the same music or have the same hobbies or friends but Louis could hang out with them all the time like this, he thinks. Niall and his guitar slung across his back with little sharpie-drawn leaves all over the body and his weird bandmate who gets into barfights about baking terminology. Niall puts a hand against the small of Louis’s back to move around him to a new stack of records and all that Louis can think about is _you can try stuff with me, if you want._

Louis hasn’t kissed a lot of people. Louis knows _now_  that he isn’t straight but he was never as concerned or dedicated to figuring it out like Niall was. He doesn’t know how he’d even bring this up. Certainly not now in the middle of a record shop while drunk, _Hey, Niall, did you ever want to kiss me? I never thought about kissing you until an hour ago. It’s been eight years since I’ve seen you and I never imagined it’d be like this. Hey, Niall, do you think you can fall in love in one night._

##

“Wrote a new song,” Niall says the next time he sees Louis. They’re in University City, Niall having just played some apartment basement show at Drexel and asking Louis where the best place was to get drinks. Louis hums. “How do you figure out what you want to say?”

“Well,” Niall grins, toothy and sharp, “never really had a problem with that, have I?” he takes a swing of his beer. “Hey, when do you start your fall semester?”

“September second,” Louis replies. Squints. “Why.”

Niall fidgets and Louis kicks at him from his bar stool. “We got another tour coming up, is all.”

Louis’s heart skips and his immediate reaction is. Disappointment. “That’s fucking killer, Niall!”

He lifts a shoulder in a half shrug and scrubs his knuckles through his hair. He’s too fucking humble. “Yeah, well. Guess so.” He frowns into his bottle. “It just sucks that we’ve been orbiting around each other here in Philly for years without knowing it and now I have to leave again, you know?”

“I mean. You’ll be back though, right? You’re not fucking off to Europe for a year or some shit, you and Harry aren’t _that_ good.”

Niall’s mouth ticks up but it’s not a full smile. “I just mean that this happened already, you know? You moved and then we dropped off each other’s maps.” Louis swallows around a knot in his throat and Niall won’t look at him. “It’s not either of our faults, its just.”

“I know.”

“Yeah.”

##

Their headlining show is at the Voltage Lounge and the show pulls the same group of kids that Louis has seen at all of their shows but the vibe is something exciting, bigger than the crowd of one or two hundred. Louis doesn’t feel it. Their tour is taking them west for eight months, some manager or agent out there thinking that their sound would really do well in the northwest, Seattle, Portland, northern California. It’s three more states that Niall can add to his list. Three states that Louis has never been to. Niall promised he’d come back. He promised that there’s still too many lawyer jokes he has to tease Louis with.

Louis wants to go with them or wants Niall to stay but neither of those are possible so he just watches the show and listens to the songs. This boy who used to yell about baseball and obsessed over Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings and knew who he was at thirteen. Never let anyone push him around but it’s not that anyone ever really tried or wanted to, anyway. But he’s always had shit to say. Louis was always the one to run his mouth but lately he’s been speechless. Never thought he’d see Niall again, and if he did he never thought it’d be at the back of a dive bar, watching Niall under lights sing to kids who sing his words right back to him. Now that he sees it, though, he can’t imagine it any other way. Niall’s new song is called _It Doesn’t Have to End Here_. Louis agrees.


End file.
